Students in Bailey Jones' fifth-grade class at Gene Brown Elementary School play learning games on a traveling map that the school borrowed from an educational arm of the National Geographic Society.

Written by

Tena Lee
| Gannett Tennessee

Gene Brown Elementary School students will spend the next two weeks exploring North America in their socks.

Bailey Jones' fifth-grade class had their first lesson on a massive 26-by-35-foot map courtesy of National Geographic's Giant Traveling Maps program. Students darted across the colorful, slick surface, seemingly excited to find a place they had been before, or one they had only heard of.

Organized by National Geographic Live, the public programming division of the National Geographic Society, the program has loaned the maps to hundreds of schools throughout the country since ...